The human being is born inarticulate. In a peculiar sense he is born alone. As he matures, he will build word-linkages between himself and his world. Most children grow up talking as the adults around them talk. If the speech they hear from their first moment of consciousness is undistinguished and banal, their own is likely to become so. Mediocrity is marvellously transmissible by contagion, and never more so than in the area of speech.

When we begin to understand the role that speech plays in life, we cannot dismiss the prevalent immaturity of speech. Speech is that through which we must constantly influence one another. From the words of a mother to her child to the words of one diplomat to another, speech is a maker of psychological universes. Speech again, is that through which we most commonly seek to escape our skin-enclosed isolation and to enter into a community of experience. Again, it is that through which we clarify our ideas and beliefs: putting these out into the public medium of language, we discover whether or not they make sense. Furthermore, it is that through which we transmit knowledge and experience: acting out our human role as builders of a tradition.